When the Saints Go Marching In

Amanda on the left with the group Humoresque

        One of the more famous Bodie stories took place she was four years old. Sarah had turned six. Goobs was making up songs on the Fisher-Price piano, and her little sister was left handed. Those were the reasons we decided to spring for a real piano at that time!

        We went to Cooper Music at the Gwinnett Place Mall – this was late 1991. There might have been other places we looked, but this is where we ended up. Part of the package of buying a piano from Cooper Music was the inclusion of free lessons for everyone in the family – group lessons – for as long as we wanted.

        Soon we had an upright piano in our rented house on Realm Lane, and all four of us were looking forward to our first group lesson.

        The lessons were in the back of the store at the mall one night a week. There were a few others besides us in the group, but we were all starting at the very beginning. Middle C.

        We got our first song – When the Saints Go Marching In – with big notes on the scale that had the letters written in so we could know what to play. The instructors, Gary and Dorothy, two awesome pianists, went over the notes with us and showed us middle C and played the song.

        When we got up to leave, we told Gary and Dorothy how excited we all were. They looked at Amanda and said she was not old enough to be taking piano lessons.

        She was too young to be able to concentrate on the lesson or the practice.

        She was too short for the piano bench and the stretch to the keyboard. Her hands were too small to reach across an octave.

        Four-year olds are just not ready for piano lessons – the effort would just be taking up time for teachers and student alike.

        I looked at Amanda when these statements were being said, and they were said kindly and matter-of-factly, but there was steam coming out of Bodie's ears, I could tell.

        One thing I learned early about my kids, they could certainly prove themselves without any intervention on my part. In this instance, I kept quiet.

        All four of us practiced When the Saints Go Marching In on our at-home piano the whole week.

        At the next lesson, Gary and Dorothy called each of us in turn to come to the piano and play the song. Everyone, that is, except Amanda.

        When everyone else had played, and it became obvious that the instructors were about to move on to the new song for the next week, Amanda got a very serious look on her face.

        She moved her short self to the edge of the folding chair she was sitting on. And then she got off the chair and stood up.

        Gary and Dorothy and everyone else in the room watched.

        Amanda took her copy of the song and walked to the piano. After moving the bench close enough so she could reach the keys, Amanda took her turn playing When the Saints Go Marching In.

        When she was done, Bodie took her music and returned to her chair.

        No one has ever again questioned whether or not Amanda was serious about playing piano!

334 20151130 When The Saints Go Marching In 

Bodie and the Bike

        In these days leading up to Amanda’s birthday, a few blogs will be writ to her honor.

Amanda’s nickname, Bodie, derives from the time when at three years old, Amanda could only speak a few words and her favorite word was elbow which she pronounced bo-bo. Bodie originally meant she who can only say elbow – now it means oh so so much more!

        One day when Bodie was in second grade, she came home from school crying. When I asked what was wrong, it soon became apparent Amanda was angry with me!

        “The teacher asked the class today who knew how to ride a bike. Why was I the only person in the room who did not raise a hand?”

        She was crying bitterly as she spoke the words.

        “Why did you not teach me how to ride a bicycle before now?”

        Oh was she mad!

        Apparently the teacher had given the class a homework assignment to write about a first time for something. Then as an example, the teacher asked how many kids knew how to ride a bike? They could write about the first time he or she rode a bicycle. I don’t know if the teacher was expecting each child to raise his or her hand or if she thought a few would raise a hand and all of them would understand the example she was illustrating.

        But Amanda was the only one who admitted to not being able to ride a bike, and she was humiliated at this obvious failure on her parents’ part.

        “Bodie, I had no idea! Your sister does not know how to ride a bike yet, and she has tried. Since Sarah is older than you, it has not occurred to us that you would be interested in learning how to ride until after your sister had mastered it.”

        “The bike has training wheels on it?”

        “No we took the training wheels off because Sarah was ready to learn without them; the bike is in the garage, and you can practice in the driveway before supper if you want to.”

        Bodes dried her tears and marched to the garage.

        By dinnertime, she could ride a bike.

        No one was ever going to embarrass Amanda in that way ever again! This was the first time she rode a bike, but it was not the first she wrote about for homework!

        And this is just one of many examples of Bodie's awe-inspiring independence!

333 20151129 Bodie and the Bike

Serious Vows

        One night while at the Canisius main hangout, the PM or Park Meadow Bar, I saw one of the middle age teachers walk in with a college girl on each arm. All three of them were smiling, and the teacher’s nose was bright red. He was not one of my professors, but I knew his name – one of the more popular Jesuits on campus.

 Suddenly it dawned on me that priests don’t necessarily keep their vows!

        That was a surprise. I knew that there was the occasional priest who had a vice or two – drinking, sex – I mean that was the stuff of literature and movies. We have our moral flaws. But it was at that moment in the PM I realized that each one of us is capable of breaking promises, commitments, vows – and while it is not okay, it is certainly human. Even for priests.

        I had been holding clergy to a higher moral standard – but they are just people. And sometimes they break their vows. Sometimes some of them do it a lot. Some of them even take their vows knowing they will break them, and some intend to not follow them at all.

        There was a guy I knew who had a friend in the seminary. The friend was a math genius and interested in money and power. He thought the Catholic church would be his path to both of those things. I was shocked that someone would become a priest for any reasons other than the theological. This young man aspired to be the first Polish Pope. When John Paul II actually became the first Polish Pope, the young man dropped out of the seminary. Since then, he has probably gotten his money and power some other way. And I’ve since come to realize that there are other kinds of people who train for the priesthood for nefarious reasons that I shudder at the reality of.

        This particular priest who had walked into the PM, I think it was just the drinking – it looked as though the girls with him that night were probably not more than drinking buddies.

        Even though we were not in a classroom that night – the Jesuits still were able to teach me something significant about life through use of a red nose, a couple of smiling young women, and priestly garb.

332 20151128 Serious Vows

School Girl

        One evening when I was working my second job at Barnes and Noble, a woman approached and asked if I knew anything about the Jesuits? I told her I had graduated from a Jesuit college in Buffalo, New York!

        “Okay, so what did you learn about the Jesuits when you were there?”

        I thought about it for a while and then responded, “I guess what I learned from them is that my education was more important than they were – because I don’t recall them ever teaching me about themselves!”

        What the B&N customer was interested in was the Jesuit connection to enneagrams – the nine personality types. Understanding the personality types of ourselves and the people around us theoretically would help us function better and get closer to a peaceful world. Well I sure did not know that about the Jesuits’ involvement in all that – sounds kind of cultish. I looked up Jesuits and enneagrams in the company computer, and the customer and I went to the section of the store where a book about enneagrams, without the Jesuit connection, was located. The woman seemed happy enough.

        I was intrigued.

        Soon I purchased a book on the history of the Jesuits and read it. I was not going to be stupefied the next time someone asked what I knew about them! This particular book did not mention enneagrams at all, but much to my surprise, it confirmed the first statement I made to the customer.

        Jesuits are and always have been all about education. They aren’t interested so much in proselytizing as they are in getting people from all areas of the world to think for themselves and come to their own conclusions about religion. Over the centuries they have often been a thorn in the side of the Pope but the Jesuits persevered anyway - doing what they thought was most necessary – educating.

        Would that I had learned more from them at the time – but I was silly and not eager to grow up. I wonder which of the nine personalities that falls under?

331 20151127 School Girl

Tradition

        It starts with Sara Lee Coffee Cake. Thanksgiving does. And most of the other holidays. We did not have Sara Lee Coffee Cake all the years when I was growing up – just the last few years of living at home. Stick it in the oven for breakfast, quick, easy, tasty – a delightful sweet treat that allowed us to all gather around together and then we were free to disperse and do the other tasks of the day – be it fixings for turkey dinner or getting ready to go out or prepping for guests to arrive.

        In the years since I left home, holiday breakfasts have not been that fast – we might have a whole meal on Christmas morning before opening presents; or we sometimes do a buffet if out-of-town family is staying with us for graduations or weddings or other festivities; or we might do something at brunch time. But Sara Lee is almost always there too – one of the offerings. I just have to have it.

        This morning it was just Mike and me. We ate the whole coffee cake by ourselves – pecan. It was wonderful.

        And we listened to Alice’s Restaurant. Usually Mike puts the vinyl album on the turntable for our Thanksgiving audio pleasure. But today he was checking the Internet for the history of Alice’s Restaurant, and we ended up listening to a YouTube version which was very satisfying. This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Thanksgiving dinner at the church where Alice lived. How about that?

        Of course, mention of Alice’s Restaurant always brings to mind Sarah and the story of memorization.

        When Sarah was in fifth grade, she was supposed to memorize her multiplication tables. And she refused. Sarah said memorization would break her spirit – make her different than who she was! I could not identify. Sarah took her lickings, grade-wise, for her times tables.

Then her piano teacher asked Sarah to memorize something. She didn’t do it. Imagine the teacher’s surprise at that! I told the teacher that I can’t make Sarah memorize – she had serious moral objections to it. (And it was after Amanda followed Sarah’s lead and told the piano teacher no when asked to memorize a piece that the teacher moved to Florida and we had to scramble for a new piano instructor – which actually turned out to be the best move for all involved!)

        Sarah’s aversion to memorizing continued for a few more years.

And then she heard Alice’s Restaurant.

        It took a while, but Sarah memorized Alice’s Restaurant!

        She was motivated.

        Getting a zero in math means nothing. But to be able to recite and sing Alice’s Restaurant? That does not break the spirit – it sets the soul to soaring!

        Memorizing other things that matter now comes so easily to Sarah – stories, guitar chords, and yes, even piano pieces. What a great thing to spend one’s gray cells that is the brain on one’s passions!

        And Amanda soon followed her passion. Thanks to some wonderful piano teachers, she soon got to memorizing those piano pieces – including the 45-minute or so classical works Amanda performed when earning her Masters in music pedagogy a few years later.

 Sets our souls to soaring!

        For the Thanksgivings past and present and traditions old and new, for family that is no longer with us and family that is hither and yon, I know we will all be together again someday – gathering at that Group W Bench in the sky!

330 20151126 Tradition

        

My Favorite Things

        It began just a few years ago. I would be in Publix, and at the checkout line I would get a weird look from the cashier. Since I was beginning to recognize that particular weird look, I would figuratively smack myself on the forehead and say to myself, “It’s Wednesday! You aren’t supposed to go to Publix on Wednesdays!”

        Wednesday is the day of the week seniors get a 5% discount. From my mid-fifties on, when I checked-out on Wednesdays, the cashiers were torn – should they ask if I was eligible for the discount and risk my ire at the suggestion I was old enough for a senior discount when I was not? Or should they keep quiet and risk my ire if I were to miss out on the saving of a few dollars? One time a cashier, having the courage to ask, told me that the discount was for people over 60. From then on, whenever I saw that look in their eyes that said, “should I ask or shouldn’t I?” I would volunteer that I was still too young for the discount. But it was easier for all involved if I just avoided Publix altogether on Wednesdays.

        For the last couple of years before I turned sixty, I realized the look in the cashiers’ eyes had gone away. And then I realized they were giving me the discount without even asking if I was eligible! That meant that I looked obviously over sixty – why inquire? So sad! And I tried to stay away on Wednesdays so as to not cheat Publix out of a few dollars just because a cashier overestimated my age. But then if I was there on a Wednesday and someone thought I was older than I really was, well then too bad, saving a few dollars helped to ease the insult.

        Now that I am sixty plus, I should make a point of only going to Publix on Wednesdays – however, and this is where Publix takes advantage of us old fogies, we tend to forget.

        Today is the day before Thanksgiving, a Wednesday. And I needed some ingredients for the cornbread stuffing Mike and I decided we would take for the buffet at friends’ tomorrow. Pulling into the parking lot at Publix, I saw lots and lots of cars. Oh my gosh, the day before a holiday – it was going to be a zoo in there. And oh gosh, it is senior discount day – a zoo and old people! Sigh.

        But the store was not as crowded as the parking lot seemed to indicate. In the produce section, a man about my age was talking to one of the Publix employees – probably a manager, not a young person. The man had a question about the availability of a certain kind of vegetable – rutabaga or something. They were engaging each other – the manager did not look rushed but instead was going out of his way to help the customer, mainly with conversation that they both seemed to care about. Finally, the manager asked what all the customer and his family would be having for Thanksgiving, and the man smiled and said their Thanksgiving was going to be on Friday when the whole family will be able to get together, and he described the planned menu. Again, the manager did not look rushed or appear to be asking out of platitudinous politeness. It was a scene of two strangers enjoying the holiday spirit together by the potatoes.

        It filled me with even more of the holiday spirit than I already had, and it reminded me of why I like Thanksgiving so much.

        Elsewhere in the store, I saw another incident of a woman customer engaging a female manager in a similar type of conversation. I wondered if Publix went out of its way to encourage their people to reach out in this manner on this day, or if the two employees were just naturally that way, or perhaps it was just the good vibes in the store on this particular day at that particular time – the kind of vibes that make you wish we could keep that spirit with us and exuding from us all year long.

        After receiving my senior discount and rolling the cart out, I made a mental note to go to Steak and Shake on Friday. I love to go there at lunchtime during the holidays to see families with out- of-town company gathered for an inexpensive meal out together. It is never like the family reunion movies you see with all the drama and verbal release of decades’ worth of grievances – instead there are cute kids excited and bouncy, and adults laughing and everyone with lots of smiles. Watching them, staring more than I should I suppose, is my holiday fix.

        We would go to Steak and Shake with Mom and my grandmother – show them off – our family with us for the holidays. Good times.

        Nowadays we also go to Biba’s – the Italian restaurant next to Publix. The apostrophe in the Biba’s sign is a slice of pizza. We know most of the waitstaff and Fred the owner and Ben the bartender. We share our kids and sons-in-law and the grandchildren with them, and at extra special times – we show off our siblings, friends, co-workers, and other storytellers.

        Listening and laughing – and eating – at our tables, or watching and absorbing the reunions, celebrations, joys at the other tables and barstools – are some of my favorite things.

        And I am thankful to Publix on this Wednesday for being the catalyst for the memories and reminders as this holiday season gets underway.

329 20151125 My Favorite Things

        

Slowly I Turn Step by Step

        While writing up these memory-a-day entries, I find myself typing the word Niagara once in a while, and every time I do, I cringe a little with a certain memory. And I guess I’ll ‘fess up to it in this post.

        The summer after my freshman year in college my Dad got me some work in the office at the welding supply business where he was a salesman. I did odd jobs around the office. One of my bigger projects was to punch out the addresses of all the clients that the business had onto metal plates. This was before word processors and computers, 1972. I can’t remember now what the address plates were used for. Maybe they were for stamping onto envelopes? I used an instrument that punched letters and punctuation into metal.

        Since I remember so little about it, perhaps I shouldn’t even be talking about it, except for this one thing.

        I had the whole client list, and I began punching away. There were a lot of addresses with Niagara Falls as the city. And there were more than a few companies with Niagara in the name. Buffalo is about 20 miles from the American Niagara Falls, and just a few more from the Canadian Niagara Falls, so it was not unusual to find a few companies from either Falls to be clients of a welding supply business in Buffalo.

        I punched away at the addresses.

        My mind wandered.

        I punched in the word Niagara, and my mind got to thinking about Niagara and how some people might not spell it right. Good thing it was me there punching in those addresses. I always prided myself on spelling correctly. I knew how to spell Niagara. There would be a lot of bad metal addresses if someone else were doing this and did not know how to spell Niagara.

        What I remember most about this job and the address punching project was that I was positive I knew how to spell Niagara correctly.

        Except that I am positive that every single instance of the word Niagara on those plates is spelled Niagra.

        That was how I thought it was spelled!

        Thank goodness these days there is the Internet to save me! When I’m typing and I have the least little wonder about the spelling of something, I remember Niagra and then I google the word so it is spelled correctly in my writing.

        I can’t imagine what the rest of the office thought when I finished for the summer and they discovered the misspelling on a goodly number of their address plates. I don’t think they mentioned it to Dad – it would have mortified him – and I would have heard about it. No doubt, Dad’s co-workers probably concluded since I was by then in my sophomore year of college, that there was a bunch of money going down the drain!

        Total screw-up, or as I have been heard to say from time to time – not the brightest bulb in the tulip patch – and in this instance, even that is a gross understatement!

328 20151124 Slowly I turn Step by Step

       

        

Story of L

        Every summer from 1995 until, I think, 2002, the girls spent a month on Long Island with their grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles. These were great times for Sarah and Amanda which have yielded many wouldn’t-trade-them-for-anything memories and might even result in a novel someday! And I tried not to miss the girls too much when they were gone.

        To help pass the time, I sent letters, alternating between daughters. They could not have been very newsy letters because I really didn’t do anything while they were gone except work long hours at the lab. There was one day I was writing to Amanda and I wrote that I was going to go to the mall and stay there until there was something interesting to say, and I would finish the letter then.

        Now, it is usually not a good idea for a personal storyteller to go out for the express purpose of getting a story – personal stories should be about things that have happened, not things that you have caused to happen just so there will be a story to tell.  I did not want to cause a story, just observe one or listen in on one – a fine line, I know, but remember, there was not much else going on that I could write about!

        And so I went to the Mall of Georgia, which was fairly new at the time – so this must have been after 1999, and I walked up and down the mall. I probably stopped in the bookstore and the card shop – but otherwise I just walked and listened. Finally, I sat down on one of the wooden benches near Old Navy not far from the food court.

        Three young people walked by, teenagers, one boy and two girls. One of the girls was talking and I heard, “And when I went out the next morning, I felt like everyone could see a big ‘L’ on my forehead!”

        And thus I was able to finish my letter to Amanda.

327 20151123 The Story of L

        

Building Rome in a Day

        Today I opened a book from the shelf and inside there were notes I must have jotted down at least a year ago for topics I could write for the memory-a-day! Of the seven items mentioned, two I have already talked about, two I’m not sure what I meant, and that leaves three almost-random things I can talk about on the blog. Two of them I can put together into one – so that will be this one.

        I’ve heard authors say that they are blatant eavesdroppers on others’ conversations in restaurants – what they hear gives them ideas for their writing, dialog-styles for their characters. I find it difficult to purposely overhear other patrons’ conversations; they fade in and out of auditory range. But over time my daughters and I have heard a few juicy tidbits that are decidedly blog-worthy.

        One afternoon at Steak and Shake, we were having an early dinner after school. We were at a booth, and because there was no one else in the restaurant, the two employees took this break from customers as an opportunity to sit down with the manager and have a talk. They picked the booth right next to us to have the conversation. We couldn’t hear well what the employees were saying, but it must have been something to the effect that they were disappointed that they had not been promoted in the time that they had been at Steak and Shake. The manager, whose voice was louder, I think because he was hoping to drown out the sound of his own bs, could be heard saying platitudes like “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and “Be patient, there is gold at the end of the rainbow.” Sarah and Amanda and I could barely keep from laughing out loud. The girls kept repeating “Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.” If I say “Rome wasn’t built in a day” to them now, they are right there with me talking like the Steak and Shake manager. I seem to recall the reason for the talk was that other people had gotten promoted ahead of these two employees – and all the manager could offer was more bs. And, personally, we were all smelling the truth of the matter.

        Another afternoon we were at Max and Erma’s having a meal. At the booth directly behind me there was a young man with an African accent sitting across from an elderly husband and wife. We could hear bits of the conversation and soon realized that the man was new to America and was engaged to the daughter of the couple at the table – they all went to the same church. The mom and dad were trying to impress upon the young man the importance of taking care of their daughter the right way. They said that they understand that some of his earnings would be sent back to his family in Africa – but some money needed to stay here to take care of his wife. Dad was explaining that aside from serving meals at the church once a month, his darling daughter had not worked a day in her life. She shouldn’t have to change her lifestyle once she’s married.

        All I could picture from this scene is a young immigrant getting married for the purposes of staying in this country and sending good money back home to his family in Africa, joining a church and wooing the most unmarriageable single woman there in hopes of her saying yes. And included in the scene were two parents eager to get rid of their disagreeable never-worked-a-day-in-her life daughter but worried they may not be able to convince the husband-to-be of what mom, dad, and daughter were expecting of him in the marriage. I wanted to stand up, look at all three people in the booth behind me and yell, “Run! All of you! Run far far away!”

        Well, those conversations were all a long time ago now – enough time has passed for Rome to have been built – hopefully there has been time to create some happily ever afters for the church folks, the restaurant employees and even the clueless manager!

326 20151122 Building Rome in a Day

         

Ms

        Women in Literature was the final English class that I took at Canisius – and it was senior year. I could be wrong about this, but I had the feeling that the Women in Lit class was put together just before registration as some interest had been shown in having such a class. I think the syllabus was new; it was certainly in flux. How times have changed – now there are colleges that have entire majors, or university branches, devoted to Women’s Studies. What an exciting time to be in college! They say this is the century of the woman – to be in school now learning women’s issues and working toward the goal of a better world for women – ah to be young again and have a chance for such a path in life! Then again, maybe on one of those paths begun in the last century is right where I was supposed to be – who knows?

        Okay, after all that first paragraph loftiness, what did I get out of the class? We read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton – pain, depression, the imagery of man as the wild arm of the compass held to practicality by the steady, down-to-earth female arm of the compass.

George Eliot’s Middlemarch was listed in the curriculum to be read, but a classmate talked the teacher into doing Fear of Flying by Erica Jung instead. Excellent selection! Some might say Middlemarch will hold up better to the test of time, but Fear of Flying was a jolly good romp back in ’75!

        Have you ever heard of Harlequin Romances? Harlequin was a publishing company that put out 6 formulaic, mostly PG, romances per month in inexpensive paperback busting-out-of-the-bodice-on-the-cover form. There was a girl in the Women’s Lit class who read all of these books as soon as they came out in the supermarket. The teacher had never heard of them and was intrigued. Next thing we knew we were each asked to pick a different Harlequin to read – I think our classmate even brought in her vast collection for us to choose from. Afterward we discussed the formulaic aspect of the books – what did they all have in common? Essentially boy meets girl, girl not interested, boy woos girl, they get together but boy does something really dumb and they break up; eventually some disaster takes place and rescue of some sort happens such that boy and girl end up together at the end happily ever after.

        Mental note – make sure that my love story that will hopefully take place someday and the sooner the better is not as common as a Harlequin Romance.

        Also included in the class, we were required to do a term paper about women in literature. I wrote about the women in the Book of Genesis – you know, the Bible begins with Eve, the mother of all mankind and the cause of all the evil in the world by being the first sinner, and the Book of Genesis ends with a woman who is not even mentioned by name other than as Potiphar’s wife, a lying seductress. From exalted creator to oppressed second class citizen, women fall quickly in the first chapter of one version of the history of the world. Although I made these observations on my own, the premise is probably not too original. I enjoyed writing the paper, but a paper is all it was – nothing earth shaking like Sarah or Rebecca from Genesis, nor prophecy-fulfilling like Leah and Rachel and their respective handmaidens. I would be very reluctant to give my husband a handmaiden in order to fulfill prophecy – what if I was wrong? Yeah….

        One day while sitting at a long conference-type table in the class, the teacher asked what it was like to walk past a construction site and hear remarks called out to us by the men? I don’t remember if there were any guys in the class – if there were any, they were very few in number. And the assumption was that the construction site had only men workers, which in 1975, was almost 100% the case. What an interesting topic for discussion! In my own experience, guys would call out, whistle, laugh, joke as I walked by on the city streets. I did not take it personally – I knew they did that to all the females of a certain age. And the men would have liked any kind of acknowledgement in return that they had been heard – be it a smile or wave, a roll of the eyes, a flinch, turning away, picking up speed, even a curse would have met the men’s need for attention from the young woman. Mostly I ignored them – which was the best thing to do. Or so I thought. While the act of receiving catcalls was not comfortable, I did not feel threatened by them, nor did I feel I had upset them if I ignored them. Not all the girls had the same experience, however, some were harassed and accused of haughtiness if they ignored the catcalls resulting in a feeling that they might be in imminent danger. How is it we live in different worlds while walking past the same construction site?

        From fear of flying to donating handmaidens, from Harlequin romances to college majors in Women’s Studies, from hearing catcalls when walking past a group of men to growing past the age of catcalls – not so much because the woman walking by the male workers is too old to be leered at, but because the world has advanced just that tiny bit such that catcalls nowadays can get the guy in trouble, it is a great time to be a woman!

325 20151121 Ms

       

       

       

        

BioLit

        There were two other English classes I ended up taking in college besides the two semesters of sophomore English. One was Bio-Literature, co-taught by an English teacher and someone from the biology department. I can’t remember now anything that we read – Voyage of the Beagle was in Anthropology. (What a great book!) Well, I seem to recall that the required reading for Bio-Lit was worthwhile, but if I have a mental block it is probably because neither of the teachers was particularly impressed with my writing – what I thought were heartfelt and well-worded answers to the exam essay questions. In truth, my writing was probably a lot of lofty words with little substance – not very good at all. And they, the teachers, I guess, did not endeavor to offer tips for improvement, while I was too thin-skinned to ask for help.

        One thing I remember clearly from Bio-Lit was the day before one of the exams, some of the kids from class asked if the exam was going to be graded for grammar and spelling! A lot of these classmates were the same people who whined in organic chemistry class my freshman year when the teacher proposed changes that would mean no grades on the transcripts. Whoa – the kids did not like that! They were going to medical school dang it! And medical schools want to see grades like “A” next to the class “organic chemistry” – not “N/A due to newfangled feel good touchy feely proctoring instead of exams – but rest assured organic chemistry has been learned”!

        So for Bio-Lit, the students were complaining that since they were wanting to get into medical school, they should be graded in Bio-Literature more for the biology learned rather than the English written – hence they should not be penalized for poor grammar or incorrect spelling. They need to have an “A” that means good science. There would be something completely wrong with the universe if they, heaven forbid, ended up with a “B” and had to explain at the med school interview the “B” was because they were stressed out what with all the science they had been learning in all their classes and then some obsessed English professor unfairly graded based on grammar! Come on! Grammar? Really? And then the medical school interviewer would sympathize and all would be right in the universe once again – but why not skip all that and just relax on the English part of the exam?

        Both professors let the students know exactly what they thought about people who think they can ever be careless with grammar and spelling – especially at the college level! Poor pre-med students – couldn’t catch a break. I’m sure they each got his or her “A” – the incident merely upped the stress levels a little.

        I got a B – didn’t have to explain it to anyone.

324 20151120 BioLit

Go Griffs

        A griffin is a mythological creature with the head and wings of an eagle and the body and tail of a lion. The griffin, this formidable being of mythological reputation, is also the mascot of Canisius College. When someone asks me where I went to college, I say “Canisius” and then I ask if he or she follows college basketball at all – if so, then there is a possibility he or she has heard of Canisius, otherwise, few people outside of Western New York will be familiar with it. Basketball is Canisius’ major sport, and every once in a while, the Griffins make at least the first round of March Madness which is the NCAA playoffs.

        There was a guy I worked with during my thirty-month, second job, stint at the Mall of Georgia’s Barnes and Noble – he was the sports section expert while I mostly worked in the children’s department. John could never remember my name – but at some point I told him I had gone to Canisius College. That he remembered! Just a couple of years ago, a full decade after my leaving B&N, I saw John at our local favorite Italian restaurant. He recognized me but looked embarrassed – “John, you still don’t remember my name, do you?” He looked down at his salad and said, “Canisius.” Actually that flatters me – someone so far from Buffalo remembers me because of the Golden Griffins.

        The big rivalry in Western New York was called The Little Three – Niagara University, the purple Eagles with Calvin Murphy as their most famous player in the pros, Saint Bonaventure, the Brown Indians (until just a few years ago when they changed the mascot to the Bona Wolf) whose most famous turned-pro player was Bob Lanier, and Canisius – the Golden Griffs who had some basketball players picked up by the pros over the years, but none became as famous as Calvin Murphy or Bob Lanier.

When I was at college, most Saturday nights during basketball season we went to Memorial Auditorium even in the fiercest wintry lake-effects-snow weather, and watched the Griffs. There were quite a few memorable moments besides the games. The organ music was great. The mascot was always there – my friend, Trix, a fellow biology major, was the Griffin sometimes – she always said it was a great experience. Canisius had male and female cheerleaders – that was new to me. Hamburg High football and Boston little league only had girls.

One of the male cheerleaders was someone who hung out with the accounting majors in the class a year ahead of me. Another accounting major who was so good with nicknames, called the cheerleader, GoGriffs. And that was the only name I knew him by for a long time! GoGriffs was diminutive – which, when he gave his cheers, gave the impression of a bundle of energy. His smile was mischievous, on and off the court, at a game or at a rathskeller – you never knew what he was thinking, and it could go well for you, or it could go against you in a pierce to-the-heart-mock-you-out kind of way.

After a game one night, LR and I gave GoGriffs a ride to the PM – the Canisius after-game hangout – the Park Meadow bar. As we rode from downtown, all three of us in the front seat of Laura’s convertible (top was up, it was winter and freezing), Don McLean came on the radio singing American Pie. Laura and I both sang along, at the top of our lungs. Suddenly GoGriffs put his hand over my mouth – then only LR could be heard. For years I thought this was because my voice was so terrible and Laura’s was much preferred. But after writing this story back in 2008 and sending it in an email to LR, she wrote back saying that my mouth was the only one Mark, GoGriffs' real name, could reach – no doubt he would have liked both of us to have stopped singing along.

The only thing more American than American Pie, in my mind, is knowing all the words, singing along, and having a male cheerleader nicknamed GoGriffs riding alongside in the cold of Buffalo after a college basketball game wanting the singing along to stop!

323 20151119 Go Griffs

Fate Effect Logic

        The second philosophy class elective that I took in college was Logic, and that was my final semester senior year. Now you might think I was already a logical person – I majored in the sciences, adhered to the scientific method, believed in cause and effect, argued with classmates over beers until dawn the case of determinism over free will – so being logical should have been a given. But I guess what one really must conclude is that sometimes logic is situational.

        Logic was a fun class. There were Venn diagrams – and Venn diagrams have math as well as logic applications. I learned that information is given, but conclusions might not necessarily be made from what is given. Another biology major, John T sat next to me – and it was fun getting to know him and enjoy logic class together.

        The teacher, however, Dr. Joly, had difficulties understanding my logic. On more than one occasion after going over an exam with the class, he would stop and say, “Once again, Ms Des Soye, I am not following the answer you gave to this question – could you explain it?” And then I explained and he would usually give me credit –my logic was all right, it was just coming from a different premise than the premise everyone else had started from.

        Isn’t that something? Instead of just marking my answer wrong and taking off points for not thinking like everyone else, Dr. Joly asked where I was coming from, and it turned out to be legitimate – and I got the points!

Sure could use a little more of that in this world!

        Now, this was not some lofty, out of the box kind of thinking on my part during these logic exams. It was usually something much more mundane – like the fact that I did not read the newspaper.

        There is one example that I have remembered all these years – mainly because when it came to light, I was embarrassed by my total ignorance of current events.

        Dr. J – Ms Des Soye, why did you answer the way you did on this particular question?

        D     -  Well it is asking us to conclude that Senator Buckley will vote no on the latest abortion issue, and that is not something we can assume.

        Dr. J – Do you know who Senator Buckley is?

        D     -  Yes, he is our Senator from New York State.

        Dr. J -   And do you not know Senator Buckley’s stand on abortion?

        D     -  I know he is William Buckley’s brother, James, and William is a conservative, and being a conservative, William is probably against abortion, but it would be wrong to assume his brother is also a conservative and against abortion.

        Dr. J – Do you read the newspaper?

        D     -  No.

        Dr. J – Senator Buckley is quite well known for his stand against abortion.

        D     -  Oh

        At the point where I was asked if I read the newspaper, my head was hanging quite low – I deserved every bit of humiliation I was feeling.

        The exam question was a good one for those who equated Senator Buckley with anti-abortion – but not a good logic question for the dunces of the world who did not read the Buffalo Evening News!

        I’m a little bit better about keeping up with current events these days, but logic, ah logic, that often escapes me still!

322 20151118 Fate Effect Logic

Stepping in It

        Of the 20 core classes we were supposed to take at Canisius College, a whopping five of them had to be philosophy! Three of them were required – Intro to Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Ethics, and two of them were electives.

        My best friend, Laura, was a philosophy major – so she took a lot more philosophy classes, and she loved them. One day LR came up with her own philosophy – one of the ancients had said you can’t step into the same river twice – well Laura said you can’t step into the same river once – and that is the philosophy I abide by to this day! She is also the friend I have mentioned before who had the fantasy of getting a phone call some day at a bar – on the bar’s landline phone, while she was a customer! Alas, that river is no more – we all have cell phones for getting calls wherever we are!

        You could always tell who was taking Intro to Philosophy – they were the kids in my other classes all lit up from excitement about what they had just heard in philosophy! It was like they were high on ideas that they were being exposed to for the first time. What is reality? Awesome question – why would anyone ever question reality? But now I see it – the question, that is, the answer will never be apparent again! My own Intro to Philosophy class was not that exciting – but it was good to get the basics. A flower is a different reality to a botanist than it is to a florist – wouldn’t it be nice, though, if each could see the flower both ways?

        Metaphysics was painful. Our teacher was a guy we called Jumping Jonathan because he was so excited when he talked metaphysics to us that he literally jumped around – and his first name was Jonathan. One day he was writing on the chalkboard, and he was writing so fast – and when he turned to face the class, he was still writing and talking and jumping and the chalk flew across the room and kids ducked out of the way! It is wonderful that he was so passionate about the material. But oh gosh, it just never sank in to my pea brain.

        Someone mentioned Plato’s cave recently, and I could not believe all the memories that came flooding in – mostly I was surprised that the cave had ebbed so far from my thoughts in all these years – how could Plato’s reality/non-reality have drifted so far away when I thought in college it would haunt me forever? And then I realized that my life is just fine without having that cave in it – I don’t really have to think about it ever again.

        The Ethics class was much more to my liking. The teacher, sadly, was the opposite of Jumping Jonathan. He sat at his desk and spoke expressionlessly from his notes. But the ethics lessons have remained in the forefront of my life – the examples in the textbook have been repeated in Star Trek episodes and MASH and so many more books and movies. I came to appreciate through this class and the scenarios witnessed since then, that decisions in the real, not just fictional, world need to be thought through situationally and not always yes or always no. And that is important on this crazy earth where people are screaming for war, when understanding of where each side is coming from might make a literal world of difference!

        One of the philosophy electives I took is a class I have already written a blog about – Philosophy of Psychoanalysis – taught by a Jesuit priest. This was Father Roth. He loved Freud as much as Charlie God did – from my Intro to Religion class of a couple of posts ago. Father Roth was the one who did exorcisms in the Sears parking lot which admittedly is not Freud, but was totally Father Roth. Yeah, there might not be much to remember academically from his class all these years later, but I have to admit, a Jesuit priest performing exorcisms in a Sears parking ramp between college campus buildings makes for great memoir material!

321 20151117 Stepping in It

Ninety-five Shots

        Celebrating TGIF last Friday with a few of my former co-workers – instead of the Algonquins, I call us the Cazuelans, we got to talking about allergies and the tortures of our various allergists over the years. Then I realized a blog post about Sarah’s allergies has not been written yet. So here it is.

        We were living in Texas, just north of Dallas, when Sarah began kindergarten. She had always had a touch of hay fever – but somehow at age five, that hay fever season seemed to be extra uncomfortable for her. We decided to have Goobs tested to find out exactly what she was allergic to and what we might be able to do about it.

        Since Sarah’s Dad had a history of hay fever himself, it was decided that he would take Goober for the testing and perhaps be better able to communicate with the doctor. Dad was not looking forward to it – he was worried that with each shot, Sarah would cry – why wouldn’t she? Shots hurt, and she was five-years-old! So Dad told Sarah as they were driving to the allergy office that morning, “If you don’t cry even once, I’ll take you to Toys R Us, and you can have anything in the store that you want.” He was clearly desperate for Sarah not to cry!

        There were 95 things that Goober was tested for that day! Ninety-five times a needle was stuck into a different spot on her back, and some of the stuff that she was being tested for was deposited just under the skin.

        Various varieties of grasses and molds and ragweeds; various kinds of food products – dairy, tomato, wheat, peanut; ninety-five antigens.

        Sarah did not cry once.

        The ragweed injections caused the most immediate reactions – at the site of each injection, a bump rose, and rose and rose. They were classified as plus 4 – the highest response. Then they began to itch, and Sarah was uncomfortable.

        The other airborne antigens made bumps also – plus 2 or plus 3 – nothing else quite like the various ragweeds. The dairy registered almost a 2 and the same with the wheat.

        One the way home, Dad asked Goober if she knew what she wanted from Toys R Us, or did she want to go to the store and look around before deciding?

 Sarah said she wanted a new dress.

Alas, they would not be going to Toys R Us for her no-crying reward!

        It was determined that Sarah could come by the allergy office, I think it was once a week, and get a shot in her thigh which would help with the airborne things she was allergic to. We would have to stay at the office for at least 20 minutes after the injection to monitor Sarah – if she had a bad reaction, they would be able to attend to it.

        Sitting in the waiting room for 20 minutes once a week for a year, I think we saw every episode of Charles in Charge that was made. And it was cute.

        When I took Goober for her shots, I only saw the nurse, not the doctor. The nurse always told everyone else in the waiting room, “This little girl,” pointing to Sarah, “had 95 shots in her back – no crying! 95 shots!” Goober got used to this and graciously accepted the attention, although she really didn’t know what the big deal was.

        Even though it took more than a few weeks for those ragweed bumps to go away – itching the whole time!

        There were occasional consultations with the actual doctor, and Dad went the first couple of times. But one day he came home and told me I would have to meet with her the next time because he was tired of getting yelled at!

        So for the next appointment, Sarah and I went and sat in this little tiny office with a HEPA machine suspended from each corner of the room, and each of them was whirring away. The doctor came in, she was a little tiny woman with a big allergy attitude.

        “Have you taken dairy and wheat out of Sarah’s diet?”

        “Uh, no – why would I deprive a five-year-old of pizza?”

        “She is allergic to tomato, and wheat, and dairy!”

        “My understanding of the results is that Sarah is allergic to ragweed and various other airborne things – the dairy and wheat hardly registered from the injections.”

        “Do you want me to test her for tomato products right now? I will prove she is allergic to them! Why should we be providing shots to help with the airborne antigens if you are not doing your part at home with the food allergies?
        “Because she is allergic to the airborne items and the shots will improve her quality of life? Sarah does not have food allergies!”

        “Do you know what I just had for lunch?”

        “Pray, tell me.”

        “A sweet potato cooked in the microwave, and a handful of sunflower seeds.”

        Sarah would be content today with a microwaved sweet potato and sunflower seeds – but taking mac and cheese, spaghetti, and pizza out of her diet right then would have been next to impossible – and those were not the things she was allergic to! I determined I would not be meeting with this woman again either.

        We moved to Georgia the next year. Although there were times when Sarah’s allergies flared up, they have never been quite as bad as they were that hay fever season when she was five.

        A few years ago now, Goober removed dairy from her diet, and she says she is more comfortable.

        So it could be I am evil Mom after all.

        Sigh.

320 20151116 Ninety-Five Shots

Tunes for the Tillerman

        We were at a birthday gathering for a friend last night, and one of the gifts he received was a vinyl copy of Tapestry by Carol King. Tapestry reminds me of Tea for the Tillerman and the summer of ’71 in Chautauqua. Carol King and Cat Stevens were the two albums the girls in my dorm played the most, and I loved the songs – they made the sunny summer in a beautiful location with a crappy job all the richer!

 Thinking of music during the summer of my second Chautauqua brings back memories of Jay the Potman. He was called the Potman for two reasons – first, his job at the Cary Hotel was to scrub the pots and pans from the kitchen. When the last of the dishwashers and waitstaff were clocking out for the evening, Jay the Potman was still scouring away at the sink in the breezeway between the kitchen and the employee dining room. He was also called Potman because of the obvious double meaning of Jay.

 Jay the Potman bought a stereo system with his first couple of paychecks – it might have even been three or four paychecks – I don’t think two would have paid for the system. People tried to talk him out of it, especially the adults. They said his parents would be ticked when they found out. He did it anyway and enjoyed playing his stereo, his very own stereo, until the end of August when he then realized that yes indeed, his parents were going to be really ticked at him for spending a good chunk of his summer earnings on a music system. Jay packed up the stereo and returned it to the store. People tried to talk him out of it, even a few adults.  But he had to experience it for himself – the store would not take it back. Jay was stuck doing some major explaining to his parents.

        Jay the Potman reminds me that there were two other guys named Jay – three total – working at the Cary Hotel that summer. That’s a lot of Jays! One was very tall and had the good looks that one would ascribe, more in those days than in today’s modern America, to the All-American boy. My only other memory of him is of the night we were partying in one of the dorms and Jay let us take a picture of him smiling and holding a marijuana joint – good thing it was just an old fashioned camera with old fashioned film – nowadays with the Internet, the picture would haunt him forever – but then again, the Jays of today’s world hopefully know better.

        The third Jay working at the hotel that summer was a little shorter and not quite as attractive as the All-American Jay. I forget what his job was, but the very first day of working there, he struck up a conversation with me and led me to believe he might be interested in me! Oh my! Then Jay invited me to a gathering he and his friends were having after work that night. Well wasn’t I feeling good! Someone had flattered me into hanging out with him and his friends that night!

        When I got to the gathering place I was surprised first of all to see many of my other female co-workers from the Cary Hotel were standing there with me, but I got the bigger shock when it became apparent that the gathering was a group of evangelical Christians – who we referred to at the time as Jesus Freaks. I was so mad at being duped – which was really my own fault – that I did not speak to Jesus Freak Jay for the rest of the summer.

        Which was unfortunate, because at the end of my Chautauqua time that August, someone said that he really wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

        Pride is totally more damning than the Internet.

        That next Christmas, I gave my brother, Eric, a copy of Tapestry by Carol King, and my brother, Clark, a copy of Tea for the Tillerman by Cat Stevens. These were of course vinyl albums, 1971 being an era before all the other forms of media became available. By giving my brothers these albums, which I was sure they had not heard of, I wanted to share with them something I felt was really special.

        About five Christmases ago, I gave Eric a CD of Tapestry and Clark a CD of Tea for the Tillerman – I thought after all these years, they might not be playing albums anymore and these were still so dear to me. Since then Eric says he does play albums all the time, and as evidenced by last night's birthday party, albums are back in fashion.

 A few Christmases ago I gave Mike a CD of Tea for the Tillerman – I think I play it more often than he does. But then again, it means so much more to me.

319 20151115 Tunes for the Tillerman 

The BiPolarity of Human Existence

        There are so many things I could go on and on about Charlie God. My very first class on my very first day of college, if you don’t count my walking into a speech class by mistake, was Intro to Religion. This was a reasonable choice to be required at a Jesuit college which expected 20 of one’s 40 classes to be core curriculum. The Jesuits’ goal was to have a well-rounded individual graduate from their institute of higher learning. If one’s major was not religion, then the core requirement was, if I recall correctly, 3 religion classes.

        Intro to Religion sounds like a good beginning. Father L made quite an entrance with his large stature, red face, and full Jesuit robes. His object was to empty us of all that we had been filled with – ostensibly by our parents – so that we could start thinking on our own. To his credit – he did not try to fill us with his own stuff. We nicknamed him Charlie God – Charles was his first name – his ego got him the surname. He was a Freud follower – back in the seventies, Freud was still a somewhat legitimate authority in psychology.

        He would get all huffy if anyone walked into class late – often Charlie God would not let the latecomer in at all – yelling and red-faced and slamming the door in the student’s face – opening it again and yelling down the hall after him or her! If we did not volunteer answers to his questions he would take it personally and call us names. First semester freshmen, in his opinion, were the worst people in the world. Unmarried eighteen-year-old girls, may or may not be lesbians, but they likely were! Absolutely everything was a phallic symbol! I had never heard of phallic symbols before and now they were literally everywhere.

        One day a kid got so made about phallic symbols, he yelled at Charlie God – “I bet you think that window there is a phallic symbol!” and Charlie looked at the window with an expression like, “isn’t it?”

        If someone crossed her legs during class, Charlie God might ask what that was all about! One didn’t dare tap a toe or scratch an itch – there might be a Freudian explanation he would want to embarrass you with!

        A couple of posts ago I mentioned cussing but I did not mention the times in my life when I myself cussed. There were a few months in junior high when my mouth got blue – although never at home. And then one day I realized that every thought in my head began with the s-word and I decided that I did not want to live that way – with so much anger. So I stopped cussing – even in my head! Until Charlie God came along. He made me so angry – and the swear words came out again – I didn’t cuss at him, of course – but at everything else – that lasted for the four years of college – even after a very good-looking senior guy told me that guys actually do notice the girls who don’t swear – I didn’t believe him and felt that I did get more attention for all the blue language. It wasn’t until a year out of college and into the workforce that I stopped once again and for good – the anger and unattractiveness made me turn it off. I know my daughters don’t agree with me on this, and that’s okay. “Shoot” is just an expression while the s-word, for me, is anger and condescension, self-loathing and disrespect.

        So that’s my history of cussing and my blaming Charlie God for some of it.

        There are times in the past when I’ve gone on and on about Charlie God – trying to figure out if he was purely evil or genuinely doing his job. I guess I finally concluded it was the latter – but only decades afterward.

        One day he was so mad at us because someone had stopped him on the quad and asked if he believed in hell! How dare some freshman ask him, Charlie God, about is personal religious beliefs! I thought, isn’t college a time for asking those questions? If you can’t talk to a priest about hell, who do you talk to about it? Now I realize Charlie God had wanted the student to conclude on his own about hell – sharing would have only swayed the student, and that was not Charlie’s job. But he did not explain it to us that way – just that he was furious at the insult of having been asked! Charlie could have done a better job with stuff like that.

        In the meantime, during the actual classes, I wondered if we were actually learning any Intro to Religion? We did have a term paper we were supposed to write and turn in. I thought, “wow! Just what I worked so hard in high school for – finally an actual term paper to do!” It was supposed to be on an actual religious experience – either our own or someone else’s. I wrote about Leo Tolstoy – research, bibliography, typed on my own $40 typewriter I had purchased with babysitting money – I might still have the term paper. But it turned out to be one of those things that I took a whole lot more seriously than the other kids. One classmate showed me his one-page handwritten term paper about his own religious experience at the hand of the nuns at the Catholic grade school he had attended!

        One of the things Charlie God did attempt to teach us was his pet philosophy, aside from Freud, the bi-polarity of human existence. And he would draw two sticks on the board with a circle connecting them – two poles one existence. I used to be able to give people the whole lecture, but nowadays, I am at a loss for the explanation. Poor Charlie God – the one thing he succeeded in getting into my brain besides the cussing! And now all that’s left are two sticks and a circle!

        That class, thankfully, only lasted one semester. One day during the spring, I happened to pass Charlie God walking on my way back through the Sears parking lot. He stopped and said hello, and I asked him if second semester freshmen were far superior to first semester freshmen? His face lit up and he went on and on about how much more mature second semester freshmen were – he was excited because I had stroked his ego, and it did not occur to him at all that he was insulting me – or rather the person I had been just one semester earlier.

318 20151114 The Bipolarity of Human Existence